Zen Cookies

Diabetes can be rough.

One of the toughest things is how it can force you into separating eating from other ideas, like comfort and pleasure. It’s not that you can’t eat well on diabetes — you can– but it’s sometimes hard to disconnect from the concept of “food as medicine.” There have been times, for example,  when  I’ve crammed excellent Swiss chocolate into my mouth to fight off low blood sugars and haven’t even really even tasted it. Or nights when I’ve sat  at dinner parties literally sulking because I can’t have a bite of cheesecake.

This winter has been particularly difficult, because the more cold weather we have — and we’ve had a truck-ful –  the more we stay inside, and the more we stay inside, the more I think about comfort food, like cookies and fresh bread and other assorted carbs.

All of this came to mind because with Valentine’s Day around the corner, I decided to bake and mail some homemade chocolate chip cookies to my sons  in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Baking is one of the  most satisfying winter sports,  but it’s always fraught with possible pitfalls, particularly when the recipes involve chocolate and butter. My approach would have to involve resolve if I didn’t want to wreck my sugars. And, keeping that in mind, I managed to make the cookies with only three tastes, a record.

How did I manage it? By focusing on the process, rather than the product. I took my time creaming the butter and sugar, carefully measuring in the flour and baking soda, and sitting outside the stove, drawing in deep breaths of  sweet cocoa scented air. I know, I know, it doesn’t hold a candle to an all out cookie feast. But I got a share of pleasure and comfort with none of the guilt, and for now, that might have to pass for my type 2 version of nirvana.

Robert Scheinman

Robert Scheinman received a PhD in Pharmacology in 1990 and joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Denver School of Pharmacy in 1995. Robert runs a medical research laboratory focused on the role of inflammation in various disease states including diabetes, arthritis, and cancer.